Larry Dierker went from Astros' All-Star pitcher to broadcaster and then manager

August 18, 2025

Larry Dierker is a Houston Astros lifer, signing with the Colt 45s at 17 years old and working as a pitcher, broadcaster, manager and fan for rest of his life.

Photo by: Brett Coomer

Larry Dierker pitched in Astrodome's first game, then had one of building's most terrifying moments

Few people accomplished more in the Astrodome than Larry Dierker. At just 18 years old, he pitched in the first game inside the building — albeit simply a scrimmage against the Triple-A affiliate before Mickey Mantle and the Yankees came to town for the Dome’s first exhibition — was the franchise’s best pitcher there for more than a decade and spent nearly the next two decades as a broadcaster before heading down to the dugout to become manager.

Still, it’s the afternoon of June 13, 1999 that is seared into the minds of Astros fans.

With Jeff Bagwell at the plate in the eighth inning of a game against the San Diego Padres, bench coach Matt Galante, seated next to Dierker in the dugout, noticed the manager wasn’t looking at the action on the field, instead, staring straight up, with his head lurched back. By the time he was asked if he was OK, Dierker was on the ground in the middle of a seizure.

A police officer in the Astros dugout ran onto the field and motioned for paramedics to help. Derek Bell, who was in the on-deck circle at the time, rushed in and tried to hold Dierker’s flopping body still.

“The convulsions were pretty much constantly going on,” Bagwell said after the game was suspended. “It was everything you’ve heard about seizures. It was just horrible to see.”

It turned out Dierker was having a grand mal seizure, which involves a loss of consciousness and stiffening of the body followed by jerking movements.

“I was kicking and thrashing like a madman, which is what you do when you have 'the big bad' one,” Dierker wrote in the Houston Chronicle in 2013. “But I wasn’t in pain. I was unconscious. I didn’t feel a thing.”

Dierker was treated for 20 minutes in the dugout while his players gathered on the field with team chaplain Gene Pemberton, put their arms around each other and prayed. When Dierker was taken to the hospital, players said they were told there was a 95% chance a brain tumor caused the seizure. The next day, better news arrived.

Dierker was found to have an arteriovenous malformation, a collection of tangled blood vessels, at the front of his brain. Two days later, brain surgery resolved the situation and a week later, Dierker was back on the golf course. He returned to manage the Astros after a four-week absence, and when the suspended game was completed with Hall of Fame closer Billy Wagner giving up a pair of home runs and nearly blowing the save before the Astros eventually won 4-3, Dierker joked, "I think if anything else would have happened I would have had another seizure."

Who is Larry Dierker?

Dierker has been with the Astros for almost their entire existence. He was signed by the Colt .45s in 1964, just two years after they were formed and has stuck with the franchise in all his various roles. Even at 78 years old, Dierker is still around, throwing out the ceremonial first pitch on opening day in 2025 and showing up in the broadcast booth of Friday’s game against the Orioles.

But what evolution of Dierker’s career is the most memorable?

“It depends on how old you are,” Dierker said in 2019. “Older people will tell me, ‘I remember going to the Dome and seeing you pitch.’ People of the next generation say they liked my broadcasting, and the younger ones say, ‘You had some great teams as a manager with the Killer B’s.’”

Even 48 years after retiring, Dierker is still the franchise leader in innings pitched (2,294⅓), third in wins (137) and fourth in strikeouts (1,487). For those more inclined to advanced statistics, Dierker’s 34.3 WAR (Wins Above Replacement) is second to only Roy Oswalt among Astros pitchers.

Baseball people then didn’t know what the world knows now: Too many innings too soon is not good for a pitcher’s arm. In 1969, Dierker threw 305⅓ innings at just 21 years old. It still stands as an Astros record and no pitcher in baseball has topped that mark since knuckleballer Phil Niekro in 1979.

Eventually, all those innings added up and Dierker missed most of the 1973 season with a shoulder injury and never fully recovered.

“I limped along with a bad shoulder throwing sidearm,” he said. “They didn’t call it rotator cuff back then, but that’s what it was.”

When his arm was still humming, Dierker came close to throwing a couple no-hitters, taking a perfect game into the ninth inning at 20 years old in 1966, and three years later having a no-hitter going with two outs in the ninth before allowing a single. That game in Atlanta was scoreless until the Braves finally won in the 13th inning. Dierker threw 12 shutout innings.

Still, one night in 1976, Dierker rediscovered some magic, no-hitting the Montreal Expos on a night when he didn’t get fancy as he got closer to the career milestone, just rearing back and throwing his elevated fastball as often as he could.

“I really can’t believe it. I didn’t think I had the stuff to throw a no-hitter. I really didn’t,” Dierker said after the game.

Two years later, Dierker was traded to the Cardinals, but his shoulder allowed him to make just nine starts before calling it a career at 31 years old.

How Larry Dierker defines Houston sports

During an 11-game losing streak late in a disappointing 1995 season, Dierker went off on a tangent in the broadcast booth that stuck with him forever. As cameras panned a sullen Astros dugout, Dierker asked his play-by-play partner if he knew what was wrong with the team. After Bill Brown speculated about poor hitting, Dierker interjected.

“Not enough Hawaiian shirts.”

Noticing his partner’s shock, Dierker, who spent 18 seasons as an Astros broadcaster, explained, “Everyone in that dugout looks like someone in their family has died. You have to have some spirit to win games. This team looks dead. Did you ever see someone wearing a Hawaiian shirt that wasn’t having a good time?”

The next night, Dierker showed up for the broadcast in a Hawaiian shirt and stuck with it the rest of the season. It became his trademark and still is, with him often wearing the laid-back attire when he shows up at the ballpark as he did Friday night.

It was partly that easy-going nature that led Astros owner Drayton McLane to grab Dierker out of the broadcast booth and make him skipper.

After the Astros finished second in each of Terry Collins’ three seasons and seemed to wilt under the manager’s strict approach — all while the popular broadcaster kept things loose upstairs in his Hawaiian shirt — McLane wanted to go in the opposite direction.

A few days after the 1996 season, team president Tal Smith called Dierker into his office for lunch. That lunch turned into several hours of baseball talk and unannounced drop-ins by general manager Gerry Hunsicker and McLane himself. Turns out, it was a job interview.

“He thought he was going to get a free lunch,” McLane joked when the Astros announced they were firing Collins and hiring Dierker on the same day.

The laid-back style seemed to work with Dierker winning four division titles in his five seasons at the helm and piling up enough wins to still rank behind only Bill Virdon and A.J. Hinch on the franchise's all-time managerial wins list. A surprising 90-loss season in 2000, which was sandwiched in the middle of the four division titles soured things and although the Astros rebounded to win the division in 2001, they flamed out in the first round of the playoffs again. By then, the knives were out and the good-natured man in charge was now too lenient in the eyes of some, including a few in his own clubhouse.

“Having a good time and appearing laid-back is all right with some people,” Dierker told Houston Chronicle columnist Fran Blinebury in 2001. “But it’s not for everyone, obviously.

“I think it probably would have helped me last year if some of the guys who play for me had actually seen me during my playing career. If they would have seen the way I competed, maybe they would understand that everything about my personality is not laid-back.”

Larry Dierker’s backstory

Dierker, who was born in Hollywood, came along a year before the start of baseball’s amateur draft. That meant when the 17-year-old graduated from Los Angeles' Taft High School in 1964, he was a free agent. Nearly ever team bid for his services, but negotiations got whittled down to the Chicago Cubs and the Colt .45s.

“The Cubs’ top offer was $35,000 but Houston kept calling back and raising their offer,” Dierker told the Los Angeles Times in 1990. “They must have believed the Cubs were still bidding.”

Dierker was able to get $55,000 out of the new team in Houston, which quickly went to work on getting its money’s worth.

The Colt .45s were on the road in St. Louis when Dierker signed and they brought him to the Cardinals' old Busch Stadium for a throwing session before sending him to the team’s spring training facility in Cocoa Beach, Fla. He impressed right away.

“If he didn’t get a lot of money, then we stole him,” Colt .45s pitching coach Cot Deal said after the bullpen session. “If you’ve ever seen a big pitcher, then you’ll know that this boy is one.”

After watching him dominate the instructional league for 10 weeks, Houston made a bold move with 10 games left the season, calling Dierker all the way up to the big leagues to start his first game on his 18th birthday. There hasn’t been a younger player appear in a big league game since.

In Dierker’s first start, he allowed the first two San Francisco Giants hitters to reach before recording a couple of outs and escaping the inning by striking out Willie Mays looking.

Dierker came out of the bullpen in the final game of the season for the 96-loss team and struck out Dodgers' All-Star Frank Howard. That was enough to impress fellow pitcher Hal Woodeshick, who asked the new kid how he did it.

“I know how to handle Howard,” Dierker told him. “Just keep the slider on the outside corner. My brother told me how to pitch to him.”

“Your brother?” said Woodeshick, startled. “How old is your brother?”

“He’s 14,” Dierker said. “But he goes to all the Dodgers games.”

Larry Dierker’s legacy

Jose Altuve, Craig Biggio and Jeff Bagwell may fight over the title of Best Astro of All-Time. José Cruz and Nolan Ryan (along with Altuve and everyone else on the championship teams) may go down as the franchise’s most beloved figures.

However, Dierker, who is one of 10 Astros players to have their number retired by the team, always will rank high in both of those categories all while finding success as a player, broadcaster and manager.

“When he came here in 1964, there was no history,” said Bill Worrell, Dierker’s friend and fellow Houston sports broadcaster. “He is ‘Mr. Astro.’ He spans all the decades.”

A day after Dierker’s seizure, Houston Chronicle columnist John P. Lopez summed it up, writing, “If Nolan Ryan, Jose Cruz, Craig Biggio and Jeff Bagwell are the greatest stars in the history of this team, then Dierker epitomizes the emblem that has been emblazoned on Astros uniforms virtually since the franchise’s inception. He has embroidered himself across the fabric of this club. He was an Astro then, an Astro now, and he’ll be an Astro forever.”